14 January 2000 coverage
Agence France Presse
Associated Press
Economist
Copyright 2000 Agence France Press
Agence France Presse
January 14, 2000, Friday 8:03 PM Eastern Time
Historian says faces extradition to Germany over Nazi claims
DATELINE: LONDON
Controversial historian David Irving, who is suing for libel over
accusations that he denied the Holocaust, told a London court Thursday that
Germany was seeking his extradition for alleged racial incitement.
He said that it was another example of "the kind of hatred I face and the
problems I face because of the repugnant allegations against me."
Irving is suing American professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books whom
he accuses of damaging his career by claiming he is a "Holocaust denier".
On the third day of the case, he told the court that the German government
"has asked for my extradition to Germany on an alleged offence I committed
in 1990."
He referred the judge to a January 12 press clipping from a German paper
about the extradition request in case "this end of the bench should suddenly
be empty."
The judge said it was "unlikely" that would happen.
The article shown to the judge came from the Stuttgarter Zeitung. It said
that a magistrates' court in nearby Weinheim had asked the British
government to extradite Irving.
It reported that Irving had been indicted in 1996 for racial incitement over
a lecture he delivered in the town in September 1990. It is illegal in
Germany to question the Holocaust.
Outside court here, Irving said the Weinheim controversy had arisen over a
comment in his lecture that the gas chambers at Auschwitz had been a fake
and built after the war.
He said he had been fined the equivalent of 15,000 pounds (24,000 dollars)
in 1992 for making the same statement in Munich in 1990, and had been banned
from Germany.
The extradition proceedings were launched in August 1998, Irving added. He
said no attempt had been made to serve a warrant against him, but the
British government had agreed to co-operate with Germany.
Lipstadt and Penguin Books deny libelling Irving in her 1994 book "Denying
the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory."
Irving says the book alleges he denied the Holocaust and distorted
statistics and documents to serve his ideological aims and to reach
historically untenable conclusions.
He also claims the book has generated "waves of hatred against him."
On Wednesday, the second day of the case, he told the court that the idea
Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews in gas chambers was "a big lie."
"I deny the gas chambers. I deny that the Germans killed millions in gas
chambers," Irving added, saying he had removed the word "Holocaust" from the
second edition of his biography of Adolf Hitler because it was "misleading,
offensive and untruthful".
As he left court Thursday, Irving was approached by a woman who said that
her grandparents had died at Auschwitz, The Times reported.
"You may be pleased to know that they almost certainly died of typhus, as
did Anne frank," he replied, according to the paper.
The case was adjourned until Monday.
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
AP Worldstream
January 13, 2000; Thursday 6:07 PM Eastern Time
DISTRIBUTION: Europe;Britian;Scandinavia;Middle
East;Africa;India;England;Asia
Hitler historian says Germany seeking his extradition
DATELINE: LONDON
British writer David Irving, waging a libel suit against an academic he
says has accused him of denying the Nazi Holocaust, said Thursday that
Germany is seeking his extradition to face charges of racial incitement.
''(It is) the kind of hatred I face and the problems I face because of the
repugnant allegations against me,'' said Irving.
He was testifying on the third day of his suit against American author
Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.''
He maintains that Lipstadt's 1994 book, ''Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,'' alleges he distorted statistics and
documents and that he denies the Holocaust. Lipstadt and Penguin deny libel.
Outside the court, Irving said the controversy arose from a comment he made
during a talk in Weinheim, Germany, in September 1990 that the Nazi gas
chambers at Auschwitz were a fake and built after World War II.
He was fined the equivalent of 15,000 pounds (dlrs 24,600) in 1992 for
making the same statement in Munich, and banned from Germany. He said the
extradition bid was launched in 1998 but no attempt had been made to serve
papers on him.
Earlier, Irving testified that he had not deliberately tried to portray
Adolf Hitler as merciful or mistranslated documents to exonerate the Nazi
leader.
Copyright 2000 The Economist Newspaper Ltd.
All rights reserved
The Economist
January 15, 2000 , U.S. Edition
Irving's last stand
AFTER reeling at Mohamed Al Fayed's allegations about the royal family's
plot to kill his son and his famous brown envelopes stuffed with cash, this
week the Royal Courts of Justice got down to the more serious business of
Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt. The anodyne title disguises what is
likely to be the most emotive and controversial libel trial for years.
In a highly unusual case, David Irving, a historian, has taken to the courts
to defend his professional integrity against allegations of malpractice and
distortion made by a fellow historian, Deborah Lipstadt. Seldom have
historians taken to the courts. But then the subject of this scholastic
falling-out is the most emotionally charged historical subject of them all:
the Holocaust.
Ms Lipstadt is professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory
University in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr Irving is the author of numerous books on
Nazism and is acknowledged, even by many of his detractors, to have an
encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the Third Reich. But his books
have courted controversy with their sympathetic portrayals of Nazi leaders.
In 1993 Ms Lipstadt alleged in "Denying the Holocaust: the Growing Assault
on Truth and Memory" that Mr Irving was one of the most prominent of the
"Holocaust deniers".
Her counsel, Richard Rampton, pulled no punches in his opening statement. He
branded Mr Irving a "liar", alleging that he had distorted history,
especially in relation to the Holocaust, to suit his unsavoury, far-right
politics.
As a taste of what is to come, Mr Rampton quoted extracts from speeches Mr
Irving has given, often to far-right groups, including this one from 1991:
"I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a
legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave-labour camp and
large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died
elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney?"
In court Mr Irving flatly denied that the Nazis had killed millions of Jews
in gas chambers in purpose-built establishments. It was "logistically
impossible." He alleges that being branded as a "Holocaust denier" has made
him a pariah in historical and publishing circles. Once he could earn over
#100,000 ($ 160,000) a year from his books about Nazi Germany; now he
struggles even to find a publisher.
Always an astute self-publicist, Mr Irving has seen his livelihood from book
publishing dry up, and he is now banned from several countries for his
pro-Nazi views. He is 62 years old, and his critics suspect that he is using
his three-month stint in court to try to revive the flagging public interest
in his work. With costs to pay if he fails, it is certainly a high-risk
tactic. But then he may feel that he has nothing left to lose.
The Guardian, London, files this report with a Berlin dateline. Also, a
late filing Irish Times, Dublin.
Irving fears arrest over speech
VIKRAM DODD AND JOHN HOOPER IN BERLIN
01/14/2000
The Guardian
Copyright (C) 2000 The Guardian; Source: World Reporter (TM)
Vikram Dodd and John Hooper in Berlin
The alleged Nazi apologist David Irving yesterday revealed that
Germany had issued a warrant for his extradition on charges of
racial incitement.
Mr Irving told the high court in London, where he is suing for libel
over claims he is a Holocaust denier, that he feared arrest by police
executing the warrant.
He told the judge, Mr Justice Gray, that he was informing him about
the warrant in case 'this end of the bench should suddenly be
empty'.
Mr Irving has been indicted since 1996 by German magistrates for
allegedly breaking laws protecting the memory of the Holocaust.
The charge relates to a speech the author made to a meeting
organised by the far right German National Party in September
1990 in which he said: 'The gas chambers at Auschwitz which they
show to the tourists are a fake.'
He was indicted over the speech six years later. A hearing was fixed
for the following year, but Mr Irving did not attend. An extradition
plea was sent to Britain last August.
Mr Irving was fined pounds 15,000 in 1992 in Germany for making
the same claim.
He said he feared being arrested at any time: 'I have warned my
family that I might not return one of these days.'
Mr Irving is banned from entering Germany. He said he did not
attend the trial because his safe passage in and out of the country
was not promised. Scotland Yard and the home office refused to
discuss the matter.
Meanwhile, back in court, Mr Irving denied accusations that he had
manipulated documents to bury evidence that Adolf Hitler had
ordered the mass murder of Jews.
He is suing over the book Denying the Holocaust, which said he
distorted documents to support his controversial views on the
Holocaust.
The book's author Deborah Lipstadt and her publishers Penguin
books, deny libel.
In his second day in the witness box, Mr Irving was tackled over his
belief that Hitler did not order the annihilation of European Jewry.
In his book Hitler's War he used files detailing communications
between German army chiefs to claim that the Nazi leader had
intervened to stop the murder of Jews.
But Richard Rampton QC, representing Prof Lipstadt and Penguin,
accused Mr Irving of deliberate mistranslation.
One document refers to an order not to liquidate a trainload of
1,000 Jews in 1941.
But Mr Irving had claimed it was an order from Hitler to halt all such
killings.
Mr Rampton said: 'You inflated it from one trainload of Jews and
you inserted an order from Hitler for which there was no evidence.'
Irving denied a deliberate error and later under questioning said:
'Why should I lie?'
Mr Rampton replied: 'Because you are trying to exonerate,
exculpate Adolf Hitler.'
In a dramatic intervention, Mr Justice Gray accused Mr Irving of
'totally perverting' the sense of a key document in an article he had
written.
Again Mr Rampton had alleged the effect was to ignore evidence
implicating Hitler to the mass murder of Jews.
Mr Irving, who is representing himself, looked tired after a second
day of cross-examination which at times dwelled on German
linguistics.
The case continues on Monday, in a bigger courtroom to
accommodate the number of journalists and members of the public
who want to attend.
............................................................................=
............................................................
World News: Libel trial will hinge on precise facts of
Holocaust
RACHEL DONNELLY
01/12/2000
Irish Times
Page 13
Copyright (C) 2000 Irish Times; Source: World Reporter (TM)
One of the most sensitive libel trials to be heard in Britain got under
way at the High Court in London yesterday when the rightwing
historian, Mr David Irving, began his long-awaited courtroom battle
against a US academic, Prof Deborah Lipstadt , and Penguin
Books, who have accused him of being a 'falsifier of history' over his
published views on the Holocaust.
Over the next three months of the trial, questions will be raised
about historical facts of the second World War and the limits of free
speech. Ultimately, the trial will decide Mr Irving's reputation as a
historian.
Mr Irving (62), whose books include Hitler's War and Goebbels:
Mastermind of the Third Reich, has been condemned across the
world for questioning in print and in public whether the Nazis killed
six million Jews during the second World War and the extent of
Hitler's knowledge of such killing.
He is suing Prof Lipstadt and Penguin over her book Denying the
Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she
accused him of being a 'Holocaust denier' who manipulated history
to cast Hitler in a positive light and questioned the existence of the
gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Mr Irving is seeking as yet undisclosed damages and an injunction
against Prof Lipstadt 's book.
Rising to his feet at 12.15 p.m. to begin reading his opening
argument, Mr Irving said the action had arisen from his publication
Hitler's War, but he insisted he had never held himself out to be a
Holocaust expert and had not written books about the Holocaust.
If he was an expert on anything, he told the court, it was on the role
that Hitler played in the propagation of the second World War, the
decisions Hitler made and the knowledge on which he based those
decisions.
But such were the 'waves of hatred' generated against him by Prof
Lipstadt and Penguin Books that publisher after publisher had
turned away from him. His income from writing had vanished, he
said, 'as assuredly as if I had been employed by one of those
companies taken over by the late Mr Robert Maxwell'.
Mr Irving said that the phrase 'Holocaust denier' had become 'one
of the most potent phrases in the arsenal of insult'.
'The word 'denier' is particularly evil: because no person in full
command of his mental faculties, and with even the slightest
understanding of what happened in World War Two, can deny that
the tragedy actually happened, however much we dissident
historians may wish to quibble about the means, the scale, the
dates and other minutiae.'
He continued: 'Yet, meaningless though it is, the phrase has
become a part of the English language. It is a poison to which there
is virtually no antidote, less lethal than a hypodermic with nerve gas
jabbed in the neck, but deadly all the same: for the chosen victim, it
is like being called a wife-beater or a paedophile.
Two hours later, when Mr Irving had finished reading his opening
remarks, Mr Richard Rampton QC, for Prof Lipstadt and Penguin
Books, opened his case with a strong attack on the historian's
reputation.
Mr Irving was not a historian at all, he said. 'To put it bluntly, he is a
liar. Lies may take various forms and may as often consist of
suppression or omission as of direct falsehood or invention, but in
the end all forms of lying converge into a single definition: wilful,
deliberate misstatement of the facts.'
Counsel continued: 'Mr Irving has used many different means to
falsify history: invention, misquotation, suppression, distortion,
manipulation and not least mistranslation.
'But all these techniques have the same ultimate effect: falsification
of the truth.'
Mr Irving's views on the Holocaust had undergone a 'sea-change'
between the publication of the first edition of Hitler's War in 1977
and the second edition in 1991. In the first edition he accepted the
historical truth of the Holocaust but by 1991 all trace of it had
disappeared from the book. Mr Irving, he said, had become
convinced by a researcher's bogus report on Auschwitz that it was
nothing more than a slave-labour camp.
Copyright 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2000 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse
January 14, 2000, Friday
Historian says faces extradition to Germany over Nazi claims
DATELINE
Controversial historian David Irving, who is suing for libel over
accusations that he denied the Holocaust, told a London court Thursday that
Germany was seeking his extradition for alleged racial incitement.
He said that it was another example of "the kind of hatred I face and the
problems I face because of the repugnant allegations against me."
Irving is suing American professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books whom
he accuses of damaging his career by claiming he is a "Holocaust denier".
On the third day of the case, he told the court that the German government
"has asked for my extradition to Germany on an alleged offence I committed
in 1990."
He referred the judge to a January 12 press clipping from a German paper
about the extradition request in case "this end of the bench should suddenly
be empty."
The judge said it was "unlikely" that would happen.
The article shown to the judge came from the Stuttgarter Zeitung. It said
that a magistrates' court in nearby Weinheim had asked the British
government to extradite Irving.
It reported that Irving had been indicted in 1996 for racial incitement over
a lecture he delivered in the town in September 1990. It is illegal in
Germany to question the Holocaust.
Outside court here, Irving said the Weinheim controversy had arisen over a
comment in his lecture that the gas chambers at Auschwitz had been a fake
and built after the war.
He said he had been fined the equivalent of 15,000 pounds (24,000 dollars)
in 1992 for making the same statement in Munich in 1990, and had been banned
from Germany.
The extradition proceedings were launched in August 1998, Irving added. He
said no attempt had been made to serve a warrant against him, but the
British government had agreed to co-operate with Germany.
Lipstadt and Penguin Books deny libelling Irving in her 1994 book "Denying
the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory."
Irving says the book alleges he denied the Holocaust and distorted
statistics and documents to serve his ideological aims and to reach
historically untenable conclusions.
He also claims the book has generated "waves of hatred against him."
On Wednesday, the second day of the case, he told the court that the idea
Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews in gas chambers was "a big lie."
"I deny the gas chambers. I deny that the Germans killed millions in gas
chambers," Irving added, saying he had removed the word "Holocaust" from the
second edition of his biography of Adolf Hitler because it was "misleading,
offensive and untruthful".
As he left court Thursday, Irving was approached by a woman who said that
her grandparents had died at Auschwitz, The Times reported.
"You may be pleased to know that they almost certainly died of typhus, as
did Anne frank," he replied, according to the paper.
The case was adjourned until Monday.
Copyright 2000 The Atlanta Constitution
The Atlanta Journal and Constitution
January 14, 2000, Friday, Home Edition
Holocaust writer admits he made error in book
BY: Bert Roughton Jr., Staff Correspondent
DATELINE: London
Historical writer David Irving was accused in court Thursday of fabricating
an order from Adolf Hitler calling for a halt to mass murders of Jews in
1941 --- a key element in his long-held argument that the Nazi leader had
initially opposed the genocide.
In his controversial 1977 book, "Hitler's War," Irving wrote that he had
discovered "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler had ordered that there
would be "no liquidation" of Jews.
However, Irving acknowledged Thursday that he had based this assertion on a
misreading of a 1941 handwritten note from Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler.
Instead of demanding the end of the killing of all Jews, the note actually
suggested that Himmler spared just one trainload of 1,000 Jews transported
from Berlin to Latvia.
The evidence connecting Hitler even to the Himmler order is merely
circumstantial: Irving said he deduced this from the fact that Himmler
issued this order from a telephone in Hitler's bunker after meeting with the
Nazi leader.
"To conclude that it was Hitler's order was reasonable rather than perverse,
" Irving said.
He maintains that there is no clear evidence that Hitler was aware of the
mass killings before 1943. He rejected statements produced in court of
soldiers, Hitler intimates and Nazi officials that tend to suggest the
German leader was at the heart of the drive to exterminate the Jews.
Irving dismissed these accounts as either secondhand or flawed in some other
way.
Irving is suing Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt and her
publisher Penguin Books for libel over her 1994 book, "Denying the
Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." The book depicts the
self-made historian as a "Holocaust denier" who twists history to support
his belief that the scope of the mass murder has been greatly exaggerated.
He believes Jews have sought to use the Holocaust story in a campaign to get
increased reparations from the German people.
The book also says he is motivated by his desire to exonerate Hitler, a
charge Irving denies.
In his second day of being cross-examined, Irving said his interpretation
was a reasonable one of the evidence at the time. He denied that he had
intentionally distorted the truth.
However, lead defense attorney Richard Rampton accused Irving of misleading
the readers of his book by intentionally distorting the contents of the
documents and suggesting he had hard evidence that Hitler had halted the
killing of Jews. "You invented a Hitler order," Rampton icily told Irving,
who stood in the witness box. "You deliberately inflated it in a way to
suggest that it meant all of the Jews."
And even after Irving discovered his error, he allowed the 1991 edition of
his book to go to press without correcting it. Yet, he did manage to edit
the word "Holocaust" out of the book because he concluded in 1988 that the
traditional Holocaust story was a myth.
Irving said this was an oversight he described as a "sin of omission."
Rampton dismissed this response. "Your failure to remove it was deliberate
because you wanted to keep this picture of a benign Adolf Hitler," he said.
Irving, 62, also announced in court that a German judge is seeking his
extradition from Britain to face 1990 charges of racial incitement. This
stems from statements he made that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were
tourist attractions built by the Polish government after the war.
He said he decided to tell the judge about the action in case "this end of
the bench should suddenly be empty."
The trial is scheduled to resume Monday.
###
Copyright 2000 Midland Independent Newspapers plc
Birmingham Post
January 14, 2000, Friday
GERMANS WANT TO EXTRADITE ME - IRVING
Controversial historian David Irving yesterday revealed that the German
government was seeking his extradition for alleged racial incitement.
The 62-year-old author told the High Court in London that it was another
example of "the kind of hatred I face and the problems I face because of the
repugnant allegations against me".
On the third day of his libel action over claims that he was a
"Holocaust denier", Mr Irving told the court that "the German government has
asked for my extradition to Germany on an alleged offence that I committed
in 1990".
He referred Mr Justice Gray, the judge hearing his case against
American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, to a January 12 press
clipping from a German newspaper about the extradition request.
Mr Irving said he drew the article to the court's attention in case
"this end of the bench should suddenly be empty".
The judge said it was unlikely that would happen.
The article shown to the judge, from Stuttgart Zeitung, stated that
"Weinheim magistrates court has requested the British Government to
extradite David Irving".
It further reported that "there has been since 1996 an indictment for
racial incitement" relating to a lecture Mr Irving delivered in Weinheim in
September 1990.
The article stated that Mr Irving "had made a name for himself on that
occasion among the circles concerned because he challenged Hitler's blame
for the war and among other things maintained that the Holocaust had not
occurred".
And it added that it was "doubtful that there will be any trial of
Irving as the allegations against him will run out of time in September this
year".
After the end of the sitting, Mr Irving said that the controversy arose
over a comment he made during a talk at Weinheim that the gas chambers at
Auschwitz were a fake and built after the war. Such a statement was a
criminal offence in Germany, he said.
He said he was fined the equivalent of pounds 15,000 in 1992 for making
the same statement in Munich in 1990. He was also banned from Germany.
The extradition proceedings revealed in court were launched in August
1998, said Mr Irving. No attempt had been made to serve the warrant against
him but the British Government had agreed to co-operate with Germany.
He said he had warned the Home Secretary that if they tried to serve a
warrant on him he would prosecute the Home Office for assault and he had
written to Jack Straw a few weeks ago.
Professor Lindstadt and Penguin Books deny libelling Mr Irving in her
1994 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.
Mr Irving, of Duke Street, Mayfair, central London, says the book
alleges he has denied the Holocaust and has distorted statistics and
documents to serve his own ideological purposes and reach historically
untenable conclusions.
The hearing was adjourned until Monday.
Copyright 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London)
January 14, 2000
Irving fears arrest over speech
BYLINE: Vikram Dodd and John Hooper in Berlin
Vikram Dodd and John Hooper in Berlin
The alleged Nazi apologist David Irving yesterday revealed that Germany
had issued a warrant for his extradition on charges of racial incitement.
Mr Irving told the high court in London, where he is suing for libel
over claims he is a Holocaust denier, that he feared arrest by police
executing the warrant.
He told the judge, Mr Justice Gray, that he was informing him about the
warrant in case 'this end of the bench should suddenly be empty'.
Mr Irving has been indicted since 1996 by German magistrates for
allegedly breaking laws protecting the memory of the Holocaust.
The charge relates to a speech the author made to a meeting organised by
the far right German National Party in September 1990 in which he said: 'The
gas chambers at Auschwitz which they show to the tourists are a fake.'
He was indicted over the speech six years later. A hearing was fixed for
the following year, but Mr Irving did not attend. An extradition plea was
sent to Britain last August.
Mr Irving was fined pounds 15,000 in 1992 in Germany for making the same
claim.
He said he feared being arrested at any time: 'I have warned my family
that I might not return one of these days.'
Mr Irving is banned from entering Germany. He said he did not attend the
trial because his safe passage in and out of the country was not promised.
Scotland Yard and the home office refused to discuss the matter.
Meanwhile, back in court, Mr Irving denied accusations that he had
manipulated documents to bury evidence that Adolf Hitler had ordered the
mass murder of Jews.
He is suing over the book Denying the Holocaust, which said he distorted
documents to support his controversial views on the Holocaust.
The book's author Deborah Lipstadt and her publishers Penguin books,
deny libel.
In his second day in the witness box, Mr Irving was tackled over his
belief that Hitler did not order the annihilation of European Jewry.
In his book Hitler's War he used files detailing communications between
German army chiefs to claim that the Nazi leader had intervened to stop the
murder of Jews.
But Richard Rampton QC, representing Prof Lipstadt and Penguin, accused
Mr Irving of deliberate mistranslation.
One document refers to an order not to liquidate a trainload of 1,000
Jews in 1941.
But Mr Irving had claimed it was an order from Hitler to halt all such
killings.
Mr Rampton said: 'You inflated it from one trainload of Jews and you
inserted an order from Hitler for which there was no evidence.'
Irving denied a deliberate error and later under questioning said: 'Why
should I lie?'
Mr Rampton replied: 'Because you are trying to exonerate, exculpate
Adolf Hitler.'
In a dramatic intervention, Mr Justice Gray accused Mr Irving of
'totally perverting' the sense of a key document in an article he had
written.
Again Mr Rampton had alleged the effect was to ignore evidence
implicating Hitler to the mass murder of Jews.
Mr Irving, who is representing himself, looked tired after a second day
of cross-examination which at times dwelled on German linguistics.
The case continues on Monday, in a bigger courtroom to accommodate the
number of journalists and members of the public who want to attend.
Copyright 2000 The Irish Times
The Irish Times
January 14, 2000
Irving tells court he expects to be arrested in Britain
BY: By RACHEL DONNELLY
The right-wing historian, Mr David Irving, said yesterday he expects to
be arrested in Britain on foot of a German extradition warrant concerning
comments he made in 1990 claiming the gas chambers at Auschwitz were built
by Polish communists after the second World War.
The claim was made on the third day of a libel action at the High Court
in London. The historian is suing the US academic, Prof Deborah Lipstadt,
and Penguin Books over allegations in her book Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory that he is a "Holocaust denier" who
deliberately mistranslates and manipulates historical documents to cast
Hitler in a positive light.
The introduction of a press clipping from yesterday's edition of
Stuttgart Zeitung, in which the extradition request was described, surprised
the court. Mr Richard Rampton QC, representing Prof Lipstadt and Penguin,
insisted the article had not been inspired by any intervention by the
defendants.
But Mr Irving said he wished to draw Mr Justice Gray's attention to the
clipping in the event that "this end of the bench should suddenly be empty",
in the event of his arrest. He said the Home Office was in receipt of the
warrant and he "wouldn't at all be surprised" if the Home Secretary, Mr Jack
Straw, ordered that it should be acted upon.
On the second day of cross-examination by Mr Rampton, the historian
denied deliberately mistranslating a document used in his books Hitler's War
and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, in order to portray Hitler as
"merciful".
Mr Irving insisted in both books that a document from November 1941
showed there was "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler had ordered there
should be no liquidation of the Jews.
However, the German translation of the reported order from Hitler did not
prohibit the liquidation of Jews generally, Mr Rampton argued, but referred
to a particular "Jew transport from Berlin" of about 1,000 Jews to Riga,
Latvia. "You inflated it from one trainload to a general ruling against the
liquidation of Jews," Mr Rampton suggested.
After circular arguments about the position of a full stop in the
document, Mr Irving eventually conceded: "I interpreted that line as being
Jews (in general). We now know it was probably a reference to that
particular transport of Jews." However, Mr Irving insisted there was not a
"shred of evidence" of deliberate mistranslation and in subsequent editions
of his books he had inserted the "narrower interpretation" of the
translation.
Moving on to the diary entries of a Reich General Governor based in east
Poland, Mr Rampton said that during a visit to Berlin in 1941 the general
heard Hitler deliver a speech in which he referred to the "annihilation of
the Jews". The governor later wrote that he had been told in Berlin "why all
this trouble (with the Jews). . . we've got no use for them. . . liquidate
them yourselves."
Mr Rampton said this reference was evidence that the Berlin authorities,
and possibly even Hitler, had told the general to liquidate a fresh
transport of European and Polish Jews. It was not, as Mr Irving would have
it, the general telling Berlin to stop "dumping" Jews in Poland for him to
deal with.
But another entry in the general's diary "completely demolishes" that
theory and Mr Irving's argument that the Jews were not gassed by the Nazis,
Mr Rampton said. He quoted the passage: "For us the Jews are also
particularly useless. . . We have approximately 3.5 million Jews. We can't
shoot them. We can't poison them. But we have to be able to do something
which will one way or another lead to their successful annihilation. . . "
The case continues on Monday.
Copyright 2000 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
The Scotsman
January 14, 2000, Friday
IRVING TELLS LIBEL TRIAL OF GERMAN WARRANT FOR RACIAL INCITEMENT
BY: Cathy Gordon
THE controversial historian, David Irving, revealed yesterday that the
German government was seeking his extradition for alleged racial incitement.
The 62-year-old author told the High Court in London it was another
example of "the kind of hatred I face and the problems I face because of the
repugnant allegations against me".
On the third day of his libel action over claims that he was a
"Holocaust denier", Mr Irving told the court that "the German government has
asked for my extradition to Germany on an alleged offence that I committed
in 1990".
He referred Mr Justice Gray, the judge hearing his case against
American academic Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, to a 12 January press
clipping from a German newspaper about the extradition request.
The article , from Stuttgart Zeitung, stated that "Weinheim magistrates
court has requested the British government to extradite David Irving".
It further reported that "there has been since 1996 an indictment for
racial incitement" relating to a lecture Mr Irving delivered in Weinheim in
September 1990.
The article stated that Mr Irving "had made a name for himself on that
occasion among the circles concerned because he challenged Hitler's blame
for the war and, among other things, maintained that the Holocaust had not
occurred".
It also added that it was "doubtful that there will be any trial of
Irving, as the allegations against him will run out of time in September
this year".
After the end of yesterday's sitting, Mr Irving told the media that the
controversy arose over a comment he made during a talk at Weinheim that the
gas chambers at Auschwitz were a fake and built after the war - a statement
which was a criminal offence in Germany.
He said he was fined the equivalent of GBP 15,000 in 1992 for making the
same statement in Munich in 1990. He was also banned from Germany.
The extradition proceedings revealed in court yesterday were launched in
August 1998, but no attempt had been made to serve the warrant against Mr
Irving.
Professor Lindstadt and Penguin Books deny libelling Mr Irving in her
1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.
Mr Irving, who is representing himself, says the book alleges he has
denied the Holocaust and has distorted statistics and documents to serve his
own ideological purposes and reach historically untenable conclusions.
He claims the book has generated "waves of hatred against him".
The hearing was adjourned until Monday.
###
Jewish Chronicle, Jan 14 2000, * Shevat 7, 5760
http://www.jchron.co.uk/jcdat/current/TW/front_main4.stm
Irving in court: aspects of Shoah "debatable"
By Lee Levitt
HISTORIAN David Irving questioned the extent of the Holocaust as his libel
action against an American academic continued in the High Court this week.
Mr Irving - who is suing Professor Deborah Lipstadt, author of "Denying the
Holocaust," and her publishers, Penguin Books - acknowledged that the Nazis
had murdered "criminally large number of Jews." He suggested the figure was
"certainly more than one million, certainly less than four million."
But he told the packed court: "I am prepared to deny the possibility that
the Nazis liquidated millions of people in gas chambers."
Under cross-examination from Richard Rampton QC, Mr Irving, who is presenting
his own case, said that in the second edition of his book "Hitler's War,"
printed in 1991, he had abandoned his previous view that Auschwitz was a
dedicated extermination centre, depicting it as a slave labour camp. He had
also removed the word "Holocaust" from the book.
During an exchange with Mr Rampton, Mr Irving said: "I do not deny that=
there
was some kind of gassing in gas chambers at [Auschwitz] Birkenau. It is=
highly
likely that there was."
But "there are aspects of the Holocaust as currently portrayed that are
questionable, debatable - and they need to be debated" The word
"Holocaust" is misleading, offensive and unhelpful. It is too
unscientific and should be avoided."
Mr Irving told the court that, after the death last September of his eldest
daughter, who had been brain-damaged and limbless, he had received a wreath
of roses and lilies, signed in the name of the head of the Nazi euthanasia
extermination programme, saying: "It was truly a merciful death."
"This is the kind of hatred that this [Lipstadt] book has subjected me to.
This was intolerable and unjustifiable."
Mr Irving is suing Professor Lipstadt over allegations in her book that he
distorted history. She is not due to testify during the trial, which is
expected to last three months.
The case continues.

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